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Art Patronage In The Digital Age

Mitch Trale has set up a digital gallery where he commissions art works based on a set of constraints.

Creating art can be an expensive business, and making money from it when everyone has come to expect stuff for free can be troublesome. Could it be time, therefore, to revert back to the sort of patronage system that flourished in Renaissance days? Big shots with money to blow would commission artists to make works of art in celebration of their glory. But these days, finding a local member of the aristocracy to finance your artistic vision can be kind of hard, but a new online gallery is hoping to change that. Commissioning, the brainchild of Mitch Trale, “explores art patronage as an act of collaborative commerce”. The commissioned artists are given a set of constraints—formal, budgetary, and otherwise—and then told to complete an original piece of art. The favored works are then selected and exhibited on the website, working like many content-driven sites that feature original written or video work, but in this case, taking the form of digital art.

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It’s an interesting idea because, while the pieces are created for the sake of art alone and not for commercial purposes, they’re also confined to a set of rules and restrictions. Will it allow for greater freedom? Who knows, some of the world’s greatest art was commissioned by institutions, some by individuals. But as an experiment in sourcing non-commercial art works while providing an income for the artist in this file-sharing happy digital age, it’ll be intriguing to watch. There are a few pieces on the site so far, each work contextualized next to its particular set of rules, like the full animated multi-gif of the image above called 10 Google Commandments.